Higher education

The contestants — all pledges of Cornell’s Zeta Beta Tau fraternity — called their secret, fat-shaming sex game the “Pig Roast,” according to the Daily Sun, Cornell’s student newspaper.

The rules were simple: Would-be brothers allegedly earned points for having sex with overweight women. If there was a tie at the end of the game, the victory went to whoever had slept with the heaviest woman. New members were told not to inform the women about the contest, according to a university report.

I’m so sick of meanness. If we could just do away with this kind of recreational meanness that would get rid of a lot of utterly pointless misery in the world. We can’t banish every disease or prevent every accident, but there’s no physical reason we couldn’t just stop doing shit like that.

Ryan Lombardi, Cornell’s vice president for student and campus life, called the game “abhorrent,” the Daily Sun reported.

“Behavior that degrades and dehumanizes women contributes to a climate and culture of tolerance for sexual violence,” he said.

Here’s a wild thought: maybe universities don’t actually need fraternities (and sororities) at all. Maybe they’re not a benign institution. Maybe they should just go the way of the duel and the male-only suffrage.

10 Responses to “Higher education”

Here’s a wild thought: maybe universities don’t actually need fraternities (and sororities) at all. Maybe they’re not a benign institution. Maybe they should just go the way of the duel and the male-only suffrage.

On that note: every university system I have heard of has no sorority/fraternity system, yet manages just fine.

“Greek letter societies” were banned at my undergraduate school about 90 years ago. School spirit seemed just fine. They’re allowed where I am now, but in general they’re not a big deal anywhere in Canada, AFAIK.

I’m trying to remember a quote, I think from a movie, where a character is questioning the point of joining an honor society in college, and concludes something along the lines of “so what you’re saying is, the point of joining an honor society, is so that I can put on my resume that I joined an honor society? That’s absurd.”

It feels like it’s from something with a clever script about clever people, like Good Will Hunting or The Social Network or something like that, but my google-fu is failing me at the moment. Anyone?

Why do they even waste time on this garbage? If people want to live in a house together, let them figure it out and manage it.

(Not that it makes anything better, but in the interest of accuracy the details seem to have gotten messed up in the transmission. The report and the original article both say the contest was for how many women they had sex with, with no weight element. That only mattered in the event of a tie. As I said, it’s no better.)

I knew a few nice people who were in frats, but frats had more than their share of jackasses, so this vile behavior doesn’t surprise me at all. The other member of the frat acting shocked are almost surely lying.

Rrr, maybe not so absurd when there’s a good chance that the potential employers are former society members. It’s the ‘old school tie’ system taken up a notch; the elite of the elite (the best, of the best, of the best, Sir), if you will.